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A lot of things happened during the pre season, Sporting sacked their main coach Marco Silva and shockingly signed Jorge Jesus from Benfica who failed to renew his contract, allegadly Sporting is spending 6M anually with him which is absolutely insane.

Porto also bought Maxi from Benfica for free, one of their symbols, for me it was just a way to mess with a rival, I don´t think he´s that great, specially after being 30. Porto also signed Casillas which was a huge surprise to anyone, not that excited about the transfer as well.

Porto, as always saw a lot of important players leave, from the 1st 11 it was: Fabiano, Alex Sandro, Danilo, Casemiro, Óliver Torres and Jackson. Quaresma also left apparently due to not being an option for the new season.

Sporting made a huge investment for this season, signing a new coach, not selling any major players such as Patrício or William, and signing 4 players for the 1st team, being left out of the champions league if they failed to deliver a good season they will be in trouble. So far they won the supercup against Benfica which was a really big deal and a good boost to start the season.

Benfica is fighting for the 3rd league in a row, without any significant moves in the transfer market, in or out, they are always a top contender, the new coach Vitória did a great coach in Guimarães and is considered to be a certain coich for the availuable portuguese coaches.

I´ll update the thread every once in a while when something relevant happens or to answer questions.

Currently we are watching the most competitive league in a long time, which was expected as Sporting made a huge gamble for this season and is now a strong contender alongside with Porto and Benfica.

Sporting is playing the best football of the league so far and despite 2 consecutive bad results (out of the cup by Braga and a loss against União Madeira that cost them the 1st place) are looking very comfortable and confident with Jesus ahead of the team, you can already see his style is implemented in any stage of their game, high intensity, quick ball to the attack, pressure in the midfield of the opposite team others, overall a very aggressive and very attacking style that is pleasant on the eye.

Even though Carillo is out of the team, due to his lack of willing to renew his contract, and William who was out injured for a lot of games in the beginning of the season, the team managed to not struggle too much.
Slimani is as beast and appears to have overcome the physical problems that affected him in the last season, Btyan Ruiz was a great addition on the attack and they form a great partnership, if Carillo was playing they´d have a fantastic trio up front.
Naldo was also instrumental because they needed more experienced players in the back.
Known for their young players you can see João Mário shining on the team already (I´ve been talking about him for some time of you remember) and benefiting from the Carrillo situation Gelson also is proving to be an exiting talent, similar to Bruma, very fast and tricky winger.
Bruno Paulista in the midfield is also starting to play a bit and is considering a big prospect, on the opposite side Gauld and Labyad don´t seem to be considered viable options for the coach and are currently on the B team.

Porto is as his usual self, like last season we have the best players on the league but an average coach and a style of play that as boring as you can get, possession and passing without consequence until some player manages to pull a trick play and we score.
I mentioned as players to watch in the 1st post Rúben Neves, Danilo Pereira, Corona and André André. And some of those guys are being our the best players so far. Rúben Neves just keeps on evolving and is already an instrumental player, Danilo and André André were 2 players that I particularly liked a lot but I didn´t think they´d do so well so fast, not only they gained their place on the team but they are also frequent options for our NT. Corona appeared later but has already 6 goals, as much as Aboubakar and is now appearing more and more comfortable on the team, the wings are for him and Brahimi no doubt.
Layun and Maxi are the full backs which provides the team with offensive quality they have a lot of assistances between them even though both of the them aren´t good defensively, but considering that we Lost Danilo and Alex Sandro they are doing good fot themselves, particularly Layun who´s been very impressivo coming only on loan and is likely to be bought in the next months.

Benfica is still dealing with the evident drop of quality on the team adding to the new coach you could already tell it would be a bumpy season, the fact that Salvio was out so far this season leaves a huge gap on their usual offensive quality, that despite both Gaitan and Jonas are being their usual selves and carrying the team pretty much on their own.
On the good side you can, finally, see some of the young prospects on the team. First it was the RB Nélson Semedo on the team with a fantastic quality and maturity for someone that young (unfortunatly injured for a couple of months), then Gonçalo Guedes playing as RW the spot of Salvio the guy is a big prospect for our youth NT, and now the guy that is really impressing me since I knew very little about him, Renato Sanches, such a high rotation player, plays his heart out, keeps the team also with high intensity and fast rotation on the ball, can run with the ball is strong when it comes to contact and has a good long range shot, pretty impressive guy.

Braga with the former Porto coach Paulo Fonseca is also doing a very promising season, drew against Porto at Dragão, recently eliminated Sporting for the cup and advanced for the next stage in europe.

Azul, could you explain the Andre Carrillo situation to me? Is he going to Benfica on a free transfer?

Sorry about the delay I´ve been out for a few days.

Carrillo will be a Benfica player next season, it´s already a done deal and is for free.

Carrillo situation always was a bit complicated, at first he was a very inconsistente player but you could be that he was a naturally gifted as a winger, eventually he started gaining more influence coached by Marco Ferreira last season. At that time he was reported to be unhappy at the club with his wages and lack of strenght of the team to fight for titles.

Sporting gambled with him to go for the last year under contract and didn´t sell him. Having bought Jorge Jesus from Benfica, who is known to be able to make players reach a high level he was considered a key player for him and not a negotiable one. The idea was to invest in the team, (which they did) and make him a key player on the attack to persuade him to renew, that´s why despite his contract condition and being linked to Porto specially he still was part of the 1st 11 and started the season being instrumental for Sporting.

The weeks were passing and him and his agent were unwilling to renew despite multiple offers, a big soap opera started on the press with both the president and the agent sending harsh regards to one another.

Eventually Sporting put Carillo apart from the team and sued him for lack of loyalty with the club, he never returned to the team after that, it was the beginning of October back then.
Later it was reported that Fenerbahce offered the double of the best offer from Sporting, later it was Atlético Madrid who was close to get him.

In the end it was clear that the player wanted to hurt Sporting and was more willing to join another club from Portugal, it was apparent that Porto was his option due to the long feud between Porto and Sporting presidents (his gf once posted on social media a cake I guess on his birthday with him dressed with a blue and white jersey ) Porto on the other hand was trying to buy Rafa from Braga and apparently he wasn´t his priority. Then from one day he was reported as signing for Atlético and the next day Sporting announced that he had signed for Benfica.

The latest is that the player was being forced to take medidal exams out of the blue by Sporting, him and his agent supected that the club was trying to make him take something to acuse doping so he won´t eat or drink anything from the club, and is always surrounded by security when outside, oh the drama…

Portugal is on the verge of making an insane sale, Renato Sanches, a player who was unknown until about November this last year is about to go for United for 50M € plus 10 if certain objective are reached, it´s been reported since yesterday with multiple sorces saying it´s close to done the deal and the player already said yes to United.

For me it´s unbelievable that someone is willing to pay this much for a player that only played half a season so Benfica, I compare the situation with William Carvalho who was reported to go for Arsenal several times for 40M but now almost 2 years after he suddently appear on the 1st team, and dispite the fact that he still looks very good, he doesn´t seem to have evolved at all this season.

If this actually happends Benfica will likely make a huge sale on him alone and possibly be able to keep other important player for next season and maybe even invest in the team.

Portugal is on the verge of making an insane sale, Renato Sanches, a player who was unknown until about November this last year is about to go for United for 50M € plus 10 if certain objective are reached, it´s been reported since yesterday with multiple sorces saying it´s close to done the deal and the player already said yes to United.

For me it´s unbelievable that someone is willing to pay this much for a player that only played half a season so Benfica, I compare the situation with William Carvalho who was reported to go for Arsenal several times for 40M but now almost 2 years after he suddently appear on the 1st team, and dispite the fact that he still looks very good, he doesn´t seem to have evolved at all this season.

If this actually happends Benfica will likely make a huge sale on him alone and possibly be able to keep other important player for next season and maybe even invest in the team.

How good is he?

For a 18 year old he is built like a tank. Also read some interesting stat.

The numbers stack up well in his favour, too. Benfica boast a win rate of 84 percent (over 19 games) with him in the side, whereas without him it’s just 57 percent (over 14 games), per Jan Hagen. This includes the two-legged quarter-final against Bayern Munich, which they lost 3-2 on aggregate, and these games allowed us to see Sanches against elite opposition. He looked right at home.

Originally Posted by Cal

I think the point is theres a fine line between comming across as a learned individual and comming across as a bit of a wanker, and utilising every corner of your vocabulary on a global internet football forum with people many of whom don't have don't have english as their first language makes you come across as the latter.

For a 18 year old he is built like a tank. Also read some interesting stat.

Yeah, no doubt, in the beginning of the season Benfica was playing very poor football. They started the season losing the Supercup to Sporting and also losing one of the 1st games of the league, soon after they lost against Porto as well, to make things worse they lost against Sporting again, this time at home and by 3-0! A couple of weeks later they played for the 3rd time against Sporting for the Cup and lost as well, the club and the coach were under as enormous pressure at that time, that´s not normal for a big club, specially the champion to lose 4 big games against the top clubs of the league, the team was one of the worse Benfica had in the recent years and it was showing.

Now, coincidence or not when Sanches entered the team he managed to introduce an electric dynamic on the midfield that Benfica never was able to achieve before, that made the team more efficient defensively due to a much higher pressure when off the ball and a capacity to run with the ball to push the team forward where their strikers, who are great, can make a difference.

Sanches is a player that can maintain an impressive intensity during the 90´ of the game and has the maturity and the quality to not be afraid to assume the game. He´s physically strong and can hold the ball very well under pressure, can push the team forward with his runs, has a very powerful long shot and also has the ability to make the last pass to assist the strikers.

Now, like I said before in this thread in the end of December he was already being very impressive and kept that form until now but who knows, the guy only played half a season at this level, it´s difficult to spend so much on a guy knowing so little, at least that´s my mentality, it´s a huge gamble, considering that for that much you can buy pretty much any top quality midfield that you want with proven quality.
Also his biggest qualities shine a lot more in a league like our where there are not that much players who are that strong physically and can run the whole game while having good technical ability, I compare his ability to run non stop with Lampart in his golden days for Chelsea only faster, now if that´s impressive here in the PL that´s what you are supposed to do if you want to play at all, in a lot of ways he´s similar to Maniche and we all remember he flopped for Chelsea, only to be unbelievable a couple of weeks later in the Euro for Portugal, and we are talking about a guy who had already won national titles, one UEFA cup and one Champions League.

Despite that he´s obviously a very promissing player and I like him a lot, I just wonder it that´s too soon for him and I´m afraid he may become a new Anderson if he moves this early in his career.

Originally Posted by ScottishInterista

I'd assume its more of the sporting directors but im not sure the model the portugese prefer to use

That´s usually it, I´ll talk about Porto even though Benfica works similarly.

We have a scout department that works worlwide, we bought Hulk on the Japanese league for instance, the club works in a system that it´s like a shadow of our tactical system, they identify multiple players that have both the potential and the mentality to play in a club like ours and have the potencial to move to bigger clubs later on.
We often have targets of 3/4 player for each position that when needed are evaluated to join the club, the president, the sport director and the scout department work together on this and the coach many times has little to no say about who we buy or not because the targets are already determined, now this didn´t happen during the Lopetegui reign, where he had an unprecedent power over transfers and we all are seeing how well that went.